Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up

by Des Barres, Pamela

  Speaking of past lives, Led Zeppelin sizzled into town and my dear, old friend Robert Plant sent a limousine to Bleecker Street so I could enjoy their show at Nassau Coliseum in style. They splintered the place as usual and afterwards took me to a dastardly bash, way out of town at a creepy old guy’s house in the sticks. There was no lighting, no refreshments, no ambiance, and very few party-goers in attendance, and I was confused until it dawned on me that the grotesque old fellow was a notorious, drug-scum-dealing dog. Rod Stewart was there in one of the dingy, darkened rooms, Mick Jagger was hovering. Keith Richards loomed around in the gloom like a storm-cloud warning. I sat on Robert’s lap, trying to make small talk with Jimmy Page’s momentary doll, while these rock giants paid respectful, dutiful homage to this bald troll.

  Mr. Page had undergone several transformations since he tossed his naughty whips into the trash for my blushing benefit so long ago. I still had chaotic, tangled feelings about my ex-shame-flame. The gooey soft spot I had for him remained but was slowly eroding. It scared me to think that he had never been who he seemed to be. What was lurking under those ebony ringlets and cherubic petal face? His beauty was even fading. Going, going. . . He told a girlfriend of mine that the idea of blood mixed with semen excited him. She didn’t spend the night. Poor old Bonzo was always stoned-out drunk morose. He even slugged my friend Michele Myer in the jaw for absolutely no reason and got himself kicked out of the Rainbow Bar and Grill, his Hollywood home away from home. It was sad, sad, sad. When Zeppelin went on the road, it was as if they had been given permission to pillage, rampage, cut loose, and poke holes into millions of eardrums with that unprecedented, massive chunk of top-heavy metal. But when I tried to picture them at home in front of a glowing fire, sipping a nice cup of tea with their wives, the image was hard to conjure up. Robert was still majestic, John Paul Jones, silently enigmatic, but their glory days were crunching, blaring, grinding gradually to a halt.

  Even though I had just danced with the demonic Led Zeppelin darlings and decided to stay away from rock madness, I dolled up my skinny self a few days later and went to an Alice Cooper show at Madison Square Garden to revel with my old friends in their success. Alice, the prototype for several copycat ghoul rockers, had opened for the GTO’s at the Shrine back in ’68, and seven years later he was being called a legend already. Pretty extreme. It shows you how rocky the rock world had become. We were having a grand old time backstage after the show, and I was feeling vivacious and sparkly when Bebe Buell strutted by, took in the scene and exclaimed, “Miss Pamela! You look so good! I hope I look as good as you do when I get to be your age!!” I was twenty-six and she was twenty-three. There was a stunned hush and Neal Smith, Alice’s tall, blond drummer admonished her tacky rudeness, which she, of course, pretended to know nothing about. “Did I say something? What did I say?” Her eyes were glittering fraud. Bebe had been Jimmy Page’s concubine after appearing as a Playboy Playmate, and I considered her to be one of the new breed of groupies who created a nasty disturbance just to be noticed. I thought it was sad that you couldn’t trust the new groupie girls. There was no camaraderie, no girlfriend affection: It was every bitch for herself. Bebe later lived with Todd Rundgren and had several notorious flings with people like Elvis Costello and Stiv Bators. We get along fine today. Why not? You have to let go of old crap, or it will become a layer of slimy scum blocking your vision.

  II

  My most major ex, Don Johnson, and the girl who pulverized my heart harder than anyone else ever had came to stay with me for a couple of weeks on Bleecker Street, and luckily my United roommate was up in the friendly skies somewhere. They slept in her bed, just outside my loft room, and every night I had to put a pillow over my head because their thrilling goings-on made me miss Michael sooooo much. Melanie Griffith was still only seventeen years old, but—thank God—had ceased to be a nubile thorn in my side. She was in New York doing publicity for her early spate of films, in which she played the innocent, Lolita-like danger-angel, torturing the likes of Gene Hackman and Paul Newman with those long legs and turned-up nose full of freckles. She and I shopped up the Village, and every time I oohed over something, she ran in and bought it for me. The only way I found to smoosh her generous nature was to keep quiet, but she must have seen the covetous shimmer in my eyes when I spotted some dangly heart earrings. As I took out the groceries to prepare the evening wad of vegetables, I found the heart-shaped sparklers nestled in the broccoli florets.

  May 6—Feeling very warm and content, having just come back from the Russian Tea Room with Melanie, also a hoity-toit club where she’s a member. We talked our buns off and danced and had a great time. I feel very sisterly toward her—almost motherly. She and Don are having problems, and I hope they’ll make it. It’s amazing how things turn out. Life is such a learning experience, I feel so opened up and twinkling, even though we found an actual rat in the living room today. D.J. came to the rescue.

  Donnie chased the rodent around, swinging a curtain rod while Melanie and I stood on various pieces of furniture, squealing like we were in a nincompoop cartoon. We begged him not to flatten the frightened creature, and he finally coaxed it into a brown paper bag and hurled it out the window, back onto the scummy streets of Manhattan from whence it came.

  Hard as it was to be strict with the Johnsons around, due to their lust for life and everything in it, I started a severe health regimen, which severely limited my evening fun options. Who wants to go out to dinner and watch someone starve? I even had to give up the Pink Teacup, the cool, old soul food joint directly next door to the bakery under my pad. The greasy odor of fried chicken livers and scrambled eggs with onions wafted through my window while I crunched granola, wheat germ, and lecithin with raw milk. I dropped alcohol, gave up caffeine, used pure maple syrup instead of sugar in my herb tea (the only thing that has stuck, except now I use it in my coffee), and took all the fat out of my extremely boring diet. I had stopped red meat three years earlier with Donnie at the first Hollywood health food restaurant, Help, and now added dairy products to the growing list of no-nos. The big jolt of excitement came when once a week I went down to Christopher Street to cheat heavy with a cone of goat milk ice cream. Whoopee. I lost many, many pounds and paid a solemn nutritionist a hefty hunk of my soap salary to deprive me of the yummy things in life. At least I was skinny and looked good. It didn’t seem to make much difference. On top of Bebe Buell’s wide-eyed backstage comment, I got one more gigantic rusty nail slammed into my jumbled self-esteem. One rainy afternoon, after my two measly lines had been severed from the student lounge scene, I was fired from Search for Tomorrow.

  The soft-eyed producer, Bernie Sofronski, who is now married to Susan (Partridge) Dey, could hardly look at me as he explained how I had been replaced by a big, clean-looking blond girl who understood the character better than I did. He said my heart wasn’t in it and I didn’t trust my own talent. Truer words had never been spoken. They had actually been holding auditions for the new Amy right in my face, and I hadn’t noticed. “Does the rest of the cast know?” my ego bawled at him when reality sunk in. Yes, Bernie said, they had even participated in the auditions. “I told them they couldn’t tell you,” he wimped at me, looking down at a pile of dumb, corny Search scripts. I was mortified. Sobbing silently, I wished I could sink through the floor and wind up on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in Fantasy-land. In the middle of John Wayne’s star on Hollywood Boulevard. On the dance floor at the Whisky a Go Go, whirling my brains out. Anywhere but this puny, stuffy office on 57th Street in New York City.

  When I came out of the office, my costars—Morgan, Michael, and John—were standing sheepishly in the hallway, waiting it out. I felt like I was burning at the stake while they hugged me, making me feel better and much worse all at once. The actor’s ego is the most fragile thing on the planet, and they understood all too well how dejected, rejected, and deflated I felt. They took me back to the Russian Tea Room, where I trampled on my health regimen with three White Ru
ssians and two black ones. While my acting mates patted on me, I tried to eat a gushing, buttery chicken Kiev, but my unsuspecting tummy retaliated, and the tempting morsel was whisked away. “This is probably the best thing that ever happened to you,” Michael Nouri stated encouragingly. “Who needs an idiotic soap opera? You’ll get back to Hollywood and star in a Scorsese movie.” And hogs will dance in heaven, right, pal? I called my weirdo acting coach Bill Hickey, and he assured me I was too good for the show anyway, and with my squashed ego semi-assuaged, I packed up all my stuff, grabbed Debbie and a guy from acting class, Joe Hardin, to help with the driving, got a spanking-new, drive-away Cadillac and headed west. Don and Melanie helped load up the car and stood at the window above the French bakery, waving as I started the three-thousand-mile trek back to my darling Michael.

  III

  After a four-day, whirlwind drivathon, with only one major stop to swoon over the glory of the Grand Canyon, I got back just in time. Michael had been getting used to living the bachelor life, thriving on it, basking in it, and I felt like a cowgirl, inept with a lasso as I tried to corral him back into my devoted, adoring heart.

  June 1, 1975—It was real weird the first couple of days home, uncomfortable even. He’s just so used to being on his own—I felt like an intruder, but I’m working on it. I see no signs of drugs, but a few mumblings here and there tell me he’s been indulging during my absence. He’s kind of into himself and withdrawn—even from me. We found a pad today, a pink and green old Hollywood bungalow right above Franklin Avenue on El Cerrito Place. It’s so lovely, lots of bamboo, plants, and sunshine, lots of cooking in my big yellow kitchen.

  The other side of the perfection surfaced in the diary a few weeks later:

  July 28—I really wish at times that I was with a normal-formal guy and didn’t have to worry about competing with music and drugs. I don’t mean to sound negative, because everything is coming along beautifully. Michael’s new band, Detective, has just signed to Swan Song. I always knew we had a link with Peter Grant and the lads, for better or for worse. But even if it’s looking real good now, I know that Led Zeppelin are a hazard in my life.

  Detective—the new HEAVY, cranking band Michael put together—signed on to Zeppelin’s exciting label Swan Song and started tons of rehearsals for the first record. The band consisted of Michael singing lead; the tall, lanky pouf-haired Michael Monarch, ex-Step-penwolf, on lead guitar; Jon Hyde, a true redheaded health freak with pale, white porcelainlike skin, on drums; Tony Kaye, the elegant ex-keyboardist from Yes, on piano; and a soul-brother bass player, Bobby Pickett.

  The Zeppelin liaison was a mixed blessing in disguise. I was in Hades-torment, knowing their wretched excess would tempt my fiancé into his usual oblivion, but being signed onto the new label Zep had conjured up with Atlantic Records was extremely prestigious as well as frighteningly hip. I would have to grin and bite it.

  Detective had to work a lot with the VP of Swan Song, a young loooong-haired, brainiac hipster, Danny Goldberg, who turned out to be a true long-lasting friend and an instant ally for me. Once a full junkie, Danny had reformed, gotten sober, and was attending the same spiritual Hilda meetings in New York where I had found such helpful solace. I now had one more hip straight person to add to that short list that included Frank Zappa and Woody Allen. “Danny doesn’t get high and he’s cool,” I announced with semi-regularity, but even though Michael adored Danny, he kept on going right down that familiar path of disrepute.

  One evening Jimmy Page called to say he would like to come by and meet the whole lineup, and while Michael rounded up the madmen, I made impromptu hors d’oeuvres to pass around while they brainstormed about Detective’s future in the limelight. Jimmy was in one of his humble, gallant moods and asked the band to open for Zeppelin on their next U.S. tour. He went so far as to announce his intention to produce the Detective record himself! Many cocktails were consumed and toasts made, laughter and euphoria abounded. Jimmy still called me “Miss P.” and kept giving me warm, memory-laden glances, which made me feel good. It has always been important for me to remain friends with my ex-loves. Why slather so much time, attention, and energy on someone only to have them disappear into the void with bad feelings?

  Zeppelin had moved into Malibu Colony planning to rehearse for their tour in Los Angeles and, as usual, the town was buzzing. A big meeting was set up for Detective to sign the Swan Song contracts, but at the last minute it appeared the contracts had been slightly rearranged by Zeppelin’s bizarre lawyer Steve Weiss. The champagne got warm while my Michael and Michael Monarch had the contracts surreptitiously checked out across town. I sat on the humongous lap of Peter Grant, cajoling, cavorting, and attempting to keep his mind off the fact that the two Michaels were exceedingly late for the major moment. Even Danny Goldberg started getting grim. I was the sole entertainment while time ticked, t-i-c-k-e-d slowly by. Steve Weiss kept drunkenly checking his Rolex, and I was wearing see-through thin when the Michaels finally burst into the room with pens poised. Michael told me later that he would have signed the back of Peter Grant’s bald head to get his green card. “If somebody asks what musical direction Detective is taking,” Michael said ruefully, “I’ll tell them our only direction is straight to the bank. This is green-card rock and roll at its finest.” When it was all over, I was so relieved I almost sobbed when I could alight from the lap of the world’s most gargantuan and influential rock-and-roll manager.

  Michele Myer booked the Starwood, the lowdown club of the decade, and Detective decided to put on a show for their enigmatic, soon-to-be-legendary bosses. The guest list was ours, because dear old Mack truck Shelly was in charge, so the place was teeming with rock puppies ready to ravage. I took turns petting Michael backstage and casually lounging in the front corner booth with Jimmy Page, Peter Grant, and road manager Richard Cole, trying to hide my jitters with lots of ha-has and anecdotes about the good ol’ days back in ’69. Jimmy didn’t have much to say and kept slipping off into a little nap. Hmm. All the hipsters downstairs kept peering up at the booth that housed the holy, but a soiled version of Mr. Clean stood guard in front of the red velvet rope, so there was no chance of intruding worshipers. I once saw Richard Cole kick a fan’s teeth right out of his head at the Rainbow Bar and Grill for approaching Robert Plant from behind. The bicuspids and molars flew through the squalid air, but the person removed from the premises was the worshiping intruder, and I am not kidding.

  There was some trouble with the soundboard at the Starwood that night, and Peter alternated between nudging Sleeping Beauty and checking his gigantic gold watch, which resembled a small grandfather clock. I happened to be backstage when that most wondrous and protective of all roadies, Mr. Cole, came to warn the band not to ask Jimmy to jam because he was “very sleepy” tonight. Uh-huh. Okay, Richard, no problem. I sat between Jimmy nodding and Peter nudging, watching my darling husband attempt to be heard, trapped within the screeching wall of noise. Take out your Detective badge, honey, and arrest those fuckers! After a few numbers, Jimmy nodded his approval and staggered on to smaller and worse things, with Peter assisting his mega-mega-megastar past the velvet rope and into the Hollywood night.

  Even if Michael felt like he was selling out for various shades of green, excitement was still high, but a few weeks later Robert’s five-year-old boy Karak died of some mysterious intestinal disorder before Robert could even get to him, which threw the whole Zeppelin camp into a nightmare of despair. Shortly after Robert returned to England, he drove his car into a ditch and had to have his leg rebuilt. Eerie whispers about their much-blabbed-about-but-never-proven pact with the devil started to surface again, while the other three members holed up in the exclusive Colony in separate seaside homes. One night after Michael talked to Jimmy on the phone, I asked how old J.P. was holding up, and the Des Barres wit shimmered through the seemingly hopeless situation, “I’m sure someone’s on either side of him, taking care of that,” he snickered forlornly. Shaking his head, he stared o
ut into space where question marks bobbed up and down. “He just asked me not to give John Paul Jones his phone number.”

  Detective rehearsals completed, the band chomping to get into the studio, the old rock-and-roll waiting game continued. Jimmy became unreachable, and Peter Grant kept putting Michael off, telling him Jimmy was “preparing” for the project. We had gotten gloriously chummy with Danny Goldberg, but even he was kept in the dark. As the days went on and on, Michael exuded a gloom that descended over the bamboo, plants, and sunshine that left me weak in the thighs. Detective needed Jimmy Page to produce the record because of the high-impact jolt of publicity that would attend the proceedings, besides the fact that Jimmy “understood” the music, having been pretty much the originator of the heaviest of all metal. How could I help my darling fill his empty waiting days? I tittered around him, full of ideas, attempting to make him happy about being alive even though he was trapped in rock-and-roll limbo. I overcompensated with a smiley-smile until my face cracked, empathized and sympathized until I became invisible.

  He was up all night, passed out ’til noon, and after plotting all kinds of hopeful, hypeful cliches, aching to rouse him from that blue, blue mood where thunder cracked and it stormed all the time, I tiptoed into the bedroom with a stunning plate of eggs. “Oh, God,” he moaned, seeing me there like Tinker Bell in an apron. “It’s not worth it, honey, it’s just not worth it.” He rolled over and faced the wall. Insomnia was eating his brain stem. Platitudes poured forth from me like sickly sweet sap from a Vermont maple: “Everything will be okay, sweetheart!” “It all happens for a reason!” “Something better will come along!” “Have faith, Michael, trust in your higher self!” “Let’s go to Disneyland, and everything will be just fine!” He peered out from his mourning place, wanting to yank out my tongue, but suffering had worn him down. He snapped like a vicious turtle instead, so I suffered the slings and arrows of his outrageous misfortune, bobbing and weaving, hoping to escape from his fancy English boarding school, finely honed verbal onslaught. Pamela Miller, human dartboard. “You’ll never come close to understanding what goes on in my mad head,” he told me, and it hurt to be left out of his turmoil, but I understood that he had to take it out on someone, and I knew that he loved me, so I kept on doting, catering, and smothering him with cupid’s bazookas until the storm was over. His pain was louder than mine, so it always took precedence—but I knew love would prevail, and I could deal with anything as long as I had my heart safely entwined in his.